PODCAST – Five workers from the Manufacture d’armes de Saint-Étienne testify to this jewel of national industry. From the 1960s until the closure in 2003, it was a high place of working-class life in the Loire, next to mining activity. Dominique Pestre was a manuchard.
Since the Middle Ages, war and hunting weapons were already produced in Saint-Étienne until reaching more than 10,000 pieces during the Revolution, and more than double half a century later. State establishment at the end of the 19th century, the factories of the Manufacture d’Armes de Saint-Étienne saw the production of the emblematic MAS G1 automatic pistols, the FAMAS but also the turrets of armored vehicles and certain anti-tank weapons.
If in 1958 President Charles de Gaulle announced a substantial investment in atomic weapons as a new deterrent force, it was at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Soviet bloc that the fate of arms factories in France will be played for the benefit of a European defence, which will result in the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs. Among them, the workers of the Manufacture d’Armes de Saint-Étienne which will be dismantled little by little despite a strong workers’ struggle which will have lasted more than twenty years until the final closure in 2001. Here is the story and testimony of Dominique Pestre, Manuchard in Saint-Étienne.
“The pride of a job well done”
Not very gifted student but above all unsuited to a school system that did not suit him, this native of Roche-la-Molière in the Loire did not really know where his future lay until someone close to the family pushed him to follow. the apprenticeship offered at the time by the school of the Manufacture d’Armes de Saint-Étienne. Arrived in 1972 and submitted to an entrance examination, he ended up making a name for himself thanks to rigorous training as well as a strong spirit of camaraderie that would never leave him. Interested in the analysis of the metals used in the manufacture of the various elements of weapons of the “Manu”, he left for Toulouse to follow a specific training and returned to Saint-Étienne as a specialist in metallurgy which led him to analyze the materials, their standards, resistance long before the era of the electron microscope. From this key position, Dominique will discover the richness of the site by its requirement but also by its possibilities as when he participates with a famous chef from the Loire in the first tests of vacuum techniques.
– Alexander Czuczman
“With the attacks of the Ministry, we put more foot in the stirrup”
Unionized since 1976, four years after his arrival as an apprentice, Dominique saw activism under the banner of the CGT through the collection of contributions or the distribution of leaflets but the announcements of plans to close the Manufacture d’Armes de Saint- Étienne reinforce his determination to go further to protect his workplace and that of his comrades. This environment where resides for him the pride of a job well done and that of being at the heart of a recognized company ends up closing its workshop doors little by little and he will, like many others, be transferred to Saint- Chamond in 1994 from where he will leave with new missions with a hospital within the framework of a work of prevention then in the policy which allows him to rub with problems of the everyday life (finances, culture , education, agriculture and industry) no doubt linked to those he knew during the fights to keep the “Manu” open.
“A technical and human waste for questions of profitability”
If in the spirit of the “Manuchards” he keeps this desire to transmit and claim, Dominique regrets following the closure of the establishment where he spent a large part of his career the loss of certain trades, techniques which have made the reputation of the “Manu” including extraordinary skills to test new technologies. If he returns to the former site of the Manufacture for the commemorations of November 11 and May 8, during which the workers gather in front of the war memorial which was, moreover, made by former employees, Dominique retains a great wound that it is difficult to return there even if, according to him, it is nevertheless necessary to turn the page without forgetting the past.
